XFINITY 1TB data cap adds $600 reasons for interest-based video compression
Just three 1080p cameras can exceed XFINITY’s new 1TB data cap — if they stream continuously. And that’s even before using the newly popular 1520p and 4K cameras. This month, Comcast started charging an additional $600/year for unlimited data. So while Camio smart video monitoring has always been important for speedy Internet connections, now it’s even more important for avoiding big ISP bills that have surprised people this month.
Camio Box (camio.com/box) is a bandwidth-efficient alternative for video monitoring that’s open to H.264 video streams from any camera or NVR. This bandwidth calculator helps you estimate data usage when using Camio Box. By running Machine Learning on the local network — so that video streams are analyzed before uploading them to the cloud — Camio reduces data usage by a factor of 10 while still providing continuous 24x7 coverage. As high resolution cameras become inexpensive (e.g. this $99 Samsung SNC-4241BE), locally running intelligence becomes more critical in making real-time video monitoring both useful and efficient. With Camio, eight 1520p cameras can use less data than a single 1080p camera that streams continuously.
Last week’s article on multi-camera video monitoring in low-bandwidth locations explained a bit about Camio’s adaptive motion filters. In particular, notice the switch from lo-res timelapse to HD as a person enters the scene. The intelligence to differentiate between the swaying of the palm tree above rippling water and the person walking by is the result of Machine Learning that’s continuously analyzing the video stream on the local network. That differentiation enables a new kind of interest-based video compression that saves a lot of bandwidth and time.
Traditional video compression encodes the pixel differences between frames to reduce the video size while preserving image quality. But for surveillance video, the bigger compression opportunity is to downsample, distill, or eliminate video that’s simply not worth watching! By ranking the importance of each video Event in real-time, Camio varies its decisions about resolution, frame rate, storage, and bandwidth for each individual video Event. Voila! Interest-based video compression!
It can be difficult to visualize Machine Learning in action, but this is a very simplistic rendering of the way that Camio separates the scene “noise” (top) from the object of interest (bottom) in deciding to switch from lo-res timelapse to HD at 1m33s in the video example above.
The bandwidth calculator distinguishes among three concepts of video motion detection:
- pixel motion is the simple movement of pixels, whether caused by minor lighting and color changes or by real things moving.
- real motion is the movement of things that you would not otherwise deem part of the scene’s background. As an example, the rippling water and swaying palm leaves are in fact moving objects; however, Camio’s Machine Learning recognizes them as background “noise” to be ignored.
- important motion means that the video Event warrants your attention or review. For example, a camera facing a store entrance may see passing cars in the distance, but only people approaching the entrance warrant attention. Both the passing cars and people are real-motion Events, but Camio Machine Learning ranks only the people approaching the entrance as important.
The bandwidth calculator will be refined continually based on your feedback, so use the latest version anytime from any browser at:
http://go.camio.com/bandwidth
p.s. — as a public service announcement to anyone using continuously streaming cameras, the new XFINITY Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan says:
The Terabyte Internet Data Usage Plan is a new data usage plan for XFINITY Internet service that provides you with a terabyte (1 TB or 1024 GB) of Internet data usage each month as part of your monthly service. If you choose to use more than 1 TB in a month, we will automatically add blocks of 50 GB to your account for an additional fee of $10 each. Your charges, however, will not exceed $200 each month, no matter how much you use.
